Slow Breather

Twice as big as a horse should be the size of Margaret F. Maclntyre, 23, physiology assistant at Goucher College (Baltimore) if only her rate of breathing were considered. The bigger an animal, the slower it breathes. A rat respires 100 to 200 times a minute, a cat 20 to 30 times, an adult human 16 to 24 times,* a horse 6 to 10 times. Miss Maclntyre breathes only 3 to 5 times a minute. In that respect she is phenomenal. Doctors read about her with wonder five years ago when she was a student at Mount Holyoke College. Only last week did the general public learn of her strange case.

She is a healthy young woman, 5 ft. i in. tall, 120 lbs. in weight At athletics she does not lose her breath as quickly as do other girls. She can hold a singing note amazingly long. Physiologically her body gets all the air it needs because, breathing more slowly than normal, she breathes more deeply. The average lung after a very deep inhalation contains five quarts of air. A person can never completely void his lungs of air. Even in death about one quart remains. In ordinary quiet breathing the average lung always contains a residue of two and a half quarts of air. Quiet inhalation adds a pint. Ordinary people use only three-fifths of their lung capacity. Miss Maclntyre, who breathes about a fifth as fast as her Goucher pupils, uses practically all her lungs at each breath. Her continual ability to do this results, physiologists guess, from some particular modification of a section of the sub-brain (medulla oblongata) which through a part of the spinal cord in the nape of the neck causes the chest to expand (pulling the lungs open) and the diaphragm to contract (giving more room in the chest cavity).

* A newborn baby breathes 62 times a minute, the rate of a grown rabbit.

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